Common Application 4.0: The Common Application is Changing!

College counselors across the nation are up in arms: the Common Application is changing its essay prompts!  In my entire history of college counseling (20+ years), I can’t ever remember Common App switching its essay questions – they always included the coveted “Topic of Your Choice" prompt, a very popular choice for students nationwide.  Next year, however, the “Topic of Your Choice” will be eliminated and prompts will rotate every year between four or five different topics.

Currently, the essay prompts are the following:

o   Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.

o   Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.

o   Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.

o   Describe a character in fiction, a historical figure, or a creative work (as in art, music, science, etc.) that has had an influence on you, and explain that influence.

o   A range of academic interests, personal perspectives, and life experiences adds much to the educational mix. Given your personal background, describe an experience that illustrates what you would bring to the diversity in a college community, or an encounter that demonstrated the importance of diversity to you.

o   Topic of your choice.

College counselors lament: 

"It will limit students' creativity!" 

"It will penalize students from low-income backgrounds because they get less help!" 

"It will add stress to the already extremely stressful process!" 

But I say, "Rubbish!" 

While in the past, most of my students have chosen the "Topic of Your Choice," 99% of their essays could have also worked for one of the other prompts.  Given the Common App’s history of very broad topics, I would be extremely surprised if students found themselves forced to write essays about extremely focused or wacky topics.  I believe students will continue to be able to write about their “Topic of Choice,” they just may need to be a bit more resourceful and creative in how they go about doing it.  And further, I have found that a lot of students struggle with having too much choice.  Sometimes having specific questions to answer is easier than having to come up with something all on your own.

In my opinion, the change that is likely to have a bigger impact is the word limit.  For the last few years, students have uploaded a word document with their essay.  Therefore, while Common App suggests 250-500 words, students could write much longer essays.  Next year, however, students will be forced to input their essay into a text box that will count the number of words/characters.  Therefore if a student chooses to write too long of an essay, the student will receive an error message.  While I am all in favor of succinct prose, I do feel some topics just need more than 500 words to be developed fully!  About three years ago, the short essay (Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences) changed to a text box limiting students' responses to 1000 characters.  That change has made it a real challenge to write anything meaningful and interesting.  Students have had to work harder to make their limited words really count and they will continue to have to do so with the longer essay going forward.

In addition, students will also no longer be able to upload a resume. On the plus side, however, several other technical changes will improve the user interface and streamline the process.